Monthly Archives: November 2014

Spa Day

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It’s Friday again, I know, how could that happen, it was just Monday a minute ago but it is. And as you know this is the day we give you ideas on what to do over the weekend. This weekend we thought we might offer something a little different. Last weekends suggestion of jetting off to Cape Disappoint on the Washington coast in your private jet was a big hit with some of you. Actually very few of you but the ones who went said it was great.

This weekend we decided to scale it down a bit and offer something for the ladies out there. That’s a big fat Spa day! Guys can go along too, but I’d recommend skipping the pedicure session Saturday morning. Ladies and some who aren’t really, like spa days and find it a big treat to go to them and have stuff done to them that they can’t get done in the privacy of their own homes.

So what can you do at a spa and more importantly what can be done to you in a spa, you might ask. Well lucky for you, you’ve come to the right place for answers. Listed below, in no particular order, are spa treatments you can order at your local spa, or if they’re unavailable there, where you can go this weekend to get them.

First is a Snake massage.

Hop over to Israel where you can get a massage from several non-venomous snakes as they slither up and presumably down your spine. Cost $70 US.

Or try your choice of the Tea, Coffee,red wine, sake, or Ramen noodle bath in Japan.

This is one is a little closer to home and I’ll bet to ladies hearts. That’s the chocolate wrap you can get at the spa in Hershey, Pa. They will wrap you or more concisely smear chocolate all over you and they mean all over and then leave you alone for a while. As a guy I have to wonder why they would leave you alone for a while but women do some strange stuff so we’ll just leave it at that.

Gold. In Japan, they give you a gold facial. That’s gold painted on your face for as long as you want it there. The cost, a measly 250 bucks, and I gotta say that if you can afford the plane ticket to Japan and back that’s pretty darn reasonable.

How about a cactus massage? In Mexico you can get rubbed, whacked, stroked or whatever with a spineless cactus paddle and pay for it. The cost $245. It doesn’t say whether that is in peso’s or dollars

And for those of  you with more agrarian roots there is a Wet Hay Wrap in Italy where you get wrapped in wet hay harvested from the meadows of Alpe di Siusi between mid-July and early August then lie on a special 100° waterbed until they harvest you I guess. As a special bonus for those of you who make it you receive a foot treatment where a fish named the Garra Rufa eat away whatever may be lurking on your feet.

I saved the most special treatment for last. That’s the Fanny Facial.  I know it seems like a contradiction in terms but that’s how it’s listed. In New York City, like where else except maybe most of California, can you get a fanny facial? I mean it’s strange even asking the question. What happens is you go in and ask for this deliberately, obviously they don’t just give you one without asking, then they perform a exfoliation of the fanny areas with a papaya-mint scrub, followed by a micro-current therapy where they apparently zap your hiney with low-voltage current to remove in their words, “any lumps or bumps from your butt”, then the whole business is finished with an organic spray tan so your fanny glows like the noon day sun. This has got to be special people. The cost was not revealed but I got to say it has to be worth it.

So those are just some of the treatments available to the Spa goer. Yes they may seem a little irregular to those who don’t frequent spas regularly or that only go to low rent ones where these special treatments aren’t available but our job is to bring you the newest and trendiest things out there, and these were certainly out there.

The ladies pictured above have just completed Yellowstone’s interpretation of a spa which is, as you can see, a snow spa, where you can spend a leisurely hour or two in the sub-zero waters of the Yellowstone river, then be rubbed down by brawny park rangers with snow before finishing the day next to a warm geyser. Upon asking we found that the Fanny Facial is not offered in Yellowstone.

There you have it. That’s the special weekend activities for you ladies. I’m sure you can’t wait to “hit the spa” as they say somewhere I’m sure. For you guys I might remind you that there’s a game on almost every minute of the weekend and beer in the fridge. Just give her the credit card and don’t ask.

Sometimes Simple Is Better

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Portland Japanese garden

As a photographer one of your jobs is to always look for the different view, the unnoticed detail, the obvious seen in a new light. But that isn’t always simple or easy. We get trained and accustomed to seeing the overall picture, the big view and forget that it is the details that add life and meaning to what we’re seeing.

While visiting the Japanese garden in Portland a few weeks ago I found myself after two days of intensive shooting realizing that I had spent most of my time getting the big picture, the wide views of the ponds and paths and trees and the larger scenes the gardener had designed for us to notice as we strolled through the garden, and although they were breathtakingly beautiful I found that I was seeing the garden from a distance, I was missing the details that add character and texture to the garden. I wasn’t as immersed in the experience as I wanted to be.

I needed to go back through and find the small things that made this extraordinary place unique. I needed detail. When you’re visiting a place like a Japanese garden there is so much going on that everything you see is blended together. The overview and the details are blended together in such a way to make the total picture complete, that you don’t focus on the small parts that complete the view, they’re just there. There would be an empty space you would feel more than see if they were gone, that is by design. Yet that is part of the photographers problem, he has to be able to notice those details then isolate them in a meaningful way. That’s where the photographer’s eye comes in.

To do that we have to borrow a phrase from the politicians handbook and use the “KISS” method, or “Keep It Simple, Stupid”. All this means is that as you observe various details that your eye may have glanced over before, you begin to isolate that particular part of the overall view and try and present it in a way that makes it meaningful and interesting at the same time. And the best way to accomplish that is to keep it simple. Remove anything that may distract the viewer from seeing the essence of the detail and let it speak for itself. The resulting picture can often give the viewer an emotional connection to the place that isn’t always in the larger views.

I chose this image of a broom leaning against the wall for several reasons. It is iconic to a Japanese garden, I love the mood it sets up against the wall, and the third is for a more personal reason. When I was in Japan visiting the various temples and gardens there, I would notice the monks sweeping the temple grounds with these brooms. It was usually an older monk or a very young one doing the sweeping. Never a monk in the middle, if you will, I asked one of them about it and was told that they didn’t use a younger man because they did too good of a job. The result was too perfect, there wasn’t the missed leaf laying against the stone to catch your eye and draw it to the beauty of the individual, or the build up of them along the walls and walkways left there by the sweeper as he made his way along the path. The details that we would take in but not see if you will, but made the whole better, more complete. The older monks knew it didn’t matter if they missed a few and the younger ones didn’t know the difference yet. The overall effect completed the harmony.

Seeing that broom against the wall brought back those memories. A simple view but a good one.

Dark Passages Golden Doorways

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Not far from the small town of Pleasant View Colorado, just a few miles East of the Colorado – Utah border there are the remnants of an ancient Pueblo called by the incongruous name of Lowry Pueblo. It was named after an early area homesteader named George Lowry, history doesn’t relate why, and it wasn’t excavated until the early 1930’s. It was built around 1060 AD and last thought to be occupied during the 1300’s. It is located about 100 miles North of Chaco Canyon. They, those whose business it is to think about these things, believe it housed anywhere from 40 to 100 individuals. The Pueblo is now part of The Canyons of The Ancients National Monument which also includes other sites such as Hovenweep National Monument. That’s about as much history as I can fit into one paragraph, thanks to Wikipedia.

The real part of going to a place like this for me, once you get past all the factual stuff, is what is it feels like to walk around there and touch the stone walls and feel the closeness of the rooms, the cool darkness and realize you are standing in the same place that people stood a thousand years ago. This pueblo is one that you can enter and go through the rooms and walk down narrow dark passages towards the center of the building. The hallways have walls that are higher than your head, maybe seven to as much as ten feet tall on either side, which must have felt like canyons to people who were much shorter than we are today. They twist and turn and have well-worn stone steps that go up and down levels until you reach the center of the building where the Great Kiva is. The stone steps are worn down slightly in the middle, where you would place your feet to move up and down the steps and it must have taken many, many trips to wear down the steps to the point where it is noticeable. Given the fact that many were probably barefoot or wearing woven sandals of some type this kiva had to have seen a lot of use.

A kiva this size wasn’t just used by the 100 fulltime residents, there had to be a huge number of visitors from the surrounding area and from as far away as Chaco and points further south to participate in what ever uses the kiva was put to. The golden doorway in the image above is the entrance to the Great Kiva. There was no one else here the day I visited so I had the place to myself. I sat down on the sand floor with my back against the stacked stone walls and listened. I wanted the ghosts to talk to me, to hear the sound of the drums and singing and watch the different ceremonies being performed, but it wasn’t to be that day, all I heard perhaps was a few whispers on the wind.

Part of the enjoyment of traveling in the late fall like this is that many times you can experience a place such as Lowry Pueblo the way it must have felt by the people who first discovered it. You are not influenced by others who dash in, look, quickly read a pamphlet then leave for the next stop. You don’t have someone feeding you the canned story of the site, even though it is done with all the best intentions, you can simply take in your own impressions, fill in the spaces with your imagination and perhaps commune with the original inhabitants in your own way. A place like this with its dark passages and golden doorways lets you do just that. I highly recommend it.

Vermilion Peak And The Snow Gods

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Lizard Head Pass is one of the famous passes in Colorado. Passes are a big deal in this part of the country if you want to go from one side of the mountains to the other, and most of them have an aura about them from the many stories told about getting to them, crossing over them, and being affected by them. They also have names that reflect their the experiences and feelings travelers have had with them.

Trail ridge, Independence, Cumberland, Iceberg, Slumgullion, Old Monarch, Cordova, Juniper, Red Mountain, Molas, Rabbit Ears and my personal favorite, Wolf creek pass, just to name a few. Wolf Creek is one of the lower passes at only 10,850′ of the batch named above and Trail ridge is the highest at 12,183′.

Many people worry about the dangers of crossing passes. They have a fear of falling off the road and hurtling to their deaths thousands of feet below. That’s usually an unreasonable fear. On most of these passes the most you can fall is a few hundred feet. I’ve always been curious about this and finally talked to one of the road maintenance crew about it. I asked “What are the risks of falling off the road?” His reply was “None, if you stay between the lines.” This is something that I have endeavored to do ever since that conversation. After all here’s a guy that drives these roads every day of the year in every type of weather. I figure he knows what he’s talking about.

Of course what makes a pass a pass is the mountains on either side of the it. On Lizard Head Pass they have some spectacular mountains. The image above is of Vermilion peak which is but one of the many mountains that the state has provided for the weary traveler to look at. There are others but they didn’t fit in the lens during this picture so they will have to be displayed separately at another time. Yellow mountain, Vermilion Peak (shown), Sheep mountain and of course Lizard Head itself are a few.

Vermilion is one of the more impressive mountains to look at, and as it can be seen from dozens of miles away if not more, and people spend a good deal of time looking at it. Consequently it has developed a routine to add to the shock and awe of its presence. One of the things it will do at the drop of a hat is interfere with the passing storm clouds that go by as regularly as the number 14 bus downtown. Here you see it scraping the bottom of a passing snow filled cloud. When this happens it tears open the cloud allowing all the snow it has to fall on it steep sides, kind of like a lucky hit on a piñata. This is enjoyable to watch as long as the snow stays up on the mountainside. When the cloud has more snow than can safely fit on the mountain it swirls down to where the highway is and dumps it there. This can be bad.

Instead of being a neat parlor trick for the tourists now things can get serious. Too much snow and of course you can’t see where you’re going, in fact you can’t see the road and this is where those bad things happen. See the paragraph above referring to “Staying between the lines.” This situation usually occurs more towards the dead of winter but can happen any month of the year depending on how capricious the snow gods are. Today they were just kind of messing around but it is always a good idea to move away from the area whenever they show up.

If you have an overriding desire to see passes and the mountains they live with I highly recommend visiting Lizard Head Pass. Simply go to Cortez, Co. on Hwy 160 and turn right onto Hwy 145, head up the hill and as you pass through the towns of Delores, Rico, Sawpit, Placerville, Norwood and Redvale to where it abruptly ends at Naturita, Co., you will have seen some exciting sights and driven right through Lizard Head pass. That’s assuming you have stayed between the lines of course. Good luck.

Before The Storm

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After nearly a week of beautiful weather the weather gods found out we were in southern Colorado and decided we had had enough sunshine, warm breezes and generally fair weather so this morning instead of the usual sunrise we had the first of many of our snowstorms.

Durango was our host last night as today was the day we were to visit Silverton and Ouray. Both of these places are up at the nosebleed elevations so if we were having rain down here you could bet that it was near blizzard conditions up there. Even as I pondered whether I would attempt it the rain began to turn to sleet then full-fledged snow.

Since going north into the higher country then east through more high country to get home was not only fool-hardy but ill advised I turned our tail to the east and ran before the storm like a sissy, I mean a well seasoned traveler, retracing our path hoping to get to Wolf Creek pass before the storm could catch up to us.

Luckily we made it but just barely, as you can see by the picture above. Wolf Creek pass is over 10,800′ high and is one of the more treacherous passes to cross in the winter, but is the only way back home unless you want to go to Kansas and turn left, so I only stopped at the overlook long enough to grab this image with my trusty iPad. I needed to get over the summit before the storm really arrived because I had neglected to pack the snow chains for the Bokeh Maru and you do not want to drive Wolf Creek in the snow without your chains on. The bones of those vehicles that have tried in the past are still visible, slowly rusting away at the bottom of the cliff.

Tomorrow I should be back broadcasting live from the Directors tower at The Institute bringing you new images and perhaps a story or two, so stay tuned. There’s film, I mean pixels at eleven.